Fairdale Defeats St. Xavier 55-52 in LIT

Earlier this season, St. Xavier trounced Fairdale by 14 points, but the Tigers faced a different Bulldogs team Tuesday night.

Fairdale (11-4) got revenge and stayed unbeaten this year with its fifth straight victory by beating the Tigers 55-52 in the second round of the Republic Bank Louisville Invitational at Valley High School.

“We have to learn from this,” St. X head coach Kevin Klein said. “I told my seniors that time is running out. There’s only four weeks left in the regular season to get where we want to be.”

St. X (12-6) jumped to a 27-14 lead midway through the second quarter. Brock Kiesler was a large part of the Tigers’ early success with eight first-half points.

“He was very active in the first half,” Klein said of the 6-foot-9 senior. “In the second, he didn’t make some of the moves he made in the first half. We’re going to need Brock to play big to get where we want to be at the end of the season.”

The Tigers relentlessly pressured the Bulldogs into eight turnovers before the intermission, resulting in a number of fast- break points.

But the Tigers lost control as Fairdale went on a 17-0 run that started in the middle of the second quarter and ended at the 5:38 mark of the third.

“Most of the first half, we played winning basketball,” Klein said. “Then it seemed like we got tired of making good plays. We started taking too many questionable shots. If we would have taken high-percentage shots, that’d be a double-digit lead and Fairdale would have had to make several big decisions in the second half.”